Building a Caring and High-Performance Culture; “If only I had known then what I know now.”
MHI Associate, Deborah Watring-Ellis
Former President and CEO of Watring & Associates, Inc., VP-Customer Experience at Trajectory Business Performance and President of Lunenburg Folk Harbour Society
Have you ever felt invisible, isolated, alone?
A colleague tells me about commuting to work on a bus and crying.
She was surrounded by people, and nobody acknowledged her pain.
My wife tells me about how she was struggling with an eating disorder and was finally hospitalized weighing 89 pounds. For months, her colleagues at work had watched her literally starve to death and no one ever asked what was going on.
When I hear these stories, I realize I have been one of those leaders, guilty of turning away – treating my employees as though personal challenges were invisible – and seeing my company suffer the consequences.
I took great pride in creating a company culture that was welcoming and friendly while also providing opportunities to be creative and grow. On the other hand, personal challenges were treated as if they did not exist.
My employees struggled, but they were not encouraged to bring their whole selves to work. I suppressed my own challenges and relied on alcohol and overachievement to soothe myself. I demonstrated the behaviour of "Leave your personal problems at home. Pull your socks up. We've come here to work."
When employees cried during their performance reviews, I wasn't interested in why my feedback on their less-than-optimal performance had elicited such an emotional response. I was not treating my employees as whole people, despite my pride in being a good leader. And I wasn’t helping them give their best at work.
“If only I had known then what I know now about the impact compassionate leadership can have on the mental health and the performance of those we lead, manage, and support.”
It isn’t difficult - it does require a different way of thinking.
It took me many years and many different manifestations of my company to realize I wasn't the great leader I thought I was. What I know now is that changing how mental health is viewed, valued, and supported inside a workplace can have a measurable impact on improved performance.
Mental illness in the workplace is real. Occupational stress injuries are real. Addictions and neurological disorders are real. They come to work with our people every day, impacting company performance.
Let’s not be the ones who turn away from our colleague who showed up at the meeting visibly distressed, or the single mother crying on her lunch or the adoptee who felt so invisible her whole life that she nearly did disappear.
“As leaders, our responsibility is to ensure our workplaces help manage mental health problems rather than contribute to them.”
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What we stand for
At MHI, our mission is to lead innovative and sustainable change to enhance the mental health of all people. The impact of mental illness on workplaces and organizations has naturally become a prime concern for many leaders looking to foster a healthier work environment and prosper over the coming years.
What we intend to do
Our experts create programs with a shared vision to dispense their knowledge and insights based on what they know has worked and hasn't worked in the past.
We will generate innovative thinking for participants surrounding key themes relevant to the virtual and hybrid workplace. These include managing people, managing performance, measuring success, accommodating people's needs and recreating a supportive social environment for the wellbeing of employees.